The Hunger Games Book 3 * Mockingjay * Suzanne Collins

I haven’t enjoyed this one as much as The Hunger Games to be honest. While the first book was fast-paced and written well and to the point, the Mockingjay offers a pale hero version of Katniss, lifeless and placid. One that’s sick and tiring easily, one that has to negotiate with the political leaders of the revolt so that she can have a cat in her quarters, one that goes from one guy to another and then back again.

The post-traumatic stress, the mental breakdowns, the self-pity, the self-loathing, the nearing of insanity .. all of these things are realistic, yes, but a bit tiresome and not very interesting to read when it’s all the same and the narrator is drowning herself in it in the face of much greater things to the point where it detracts from the plot.

I didn’t like this wavering Katniss. I didn’ t like her strength and her resolve gone – the way that Peta went. I didn’t like that she treated Gale, her previous crush, more like a brother than a lover. Towards the end of this novel, I didn’t give a flying fart about Katniss’s love life and who she ended up with, because everything seemed like such a hopeless, depressing mess that there was no point. I also hated how she kept flip-flopping and toying with both Gale and Peeta.

I felt that Katniss was no longer the main character – but the war was. We didn’t get to see the war. We didn’t get to experience it first hand – but more as a spectator (much like going to the movies). The movies made me cry because of the selfless abandon that people charged a power higher than their own, their desire to fight and change and grow. The book did not move me.

What DID kill me was Finnick’s death. Finnick was one of the characters I loved most in this series, and call me petty, but I can’t forgive Collins for killing him off after he’d been through so much and finally got to marry the love of his life. It wasn’t even a death of purpose. He got eaten by mutts in a sewer, along with half their assassin team. It annoyed me so much because their deaths felt so UNNECESSARY, like they were just a way for Collins to emphasize that “this is a DEATHLY SERIOUS, VERY BLOODY BOOK!” It felt like she was just randomly and meaninglessly killing off supporting characters because she couldn’t bear to part with her main ones. Deaths are fine when they’re important to the plot, but this felt like death for the sake of death.

I read all this build-up and didn’t get rewarded for it. And even though the rebels triumphed, I didn’t feel anything for them, not relief, not happiness, just nothing. I was just detached. And none of it was thanks to Katniss: her only role in the Capitol’s defeat was watching Prim die, getting burned, and waking up in a hospital, where we’re TOLD instead of SHOWN how the Capitol fell (all while she was unconscious, an occurrence that’s way too common in this book).

Best parts

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
They strung up a man
They say who murdered three.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out
For his love to flee.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run,
So we’d both be free.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Wear a necklace of rope,
Side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree.

Worst parts:

Collective thinking is usually short-lived. We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.

The book is bleak. The book offers no hope and no hero. This is going to go into the donation pile.

2 replies on “The Hunger Games Book 3 * Mockingjay * Suzanne Collins”

Love this review! I remember reading this book when it first came out, being insanely disappointed, and immediately forgetting it all. There’s only one thing I actually remember from the entire book. Don’t think I’ll ever reread it or watch the movies.

[…] a rise from rags to riches and a struggle to the top when everybody is perfect. A book about a Mockingjay that sings the start of a revolution and then is hanged to death in front of friends and family and […]